colleges

College (Latin: collegium) is a term most often used today in Ireland and the United States to denote a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution and in other English-speaking countries to refer to a secondary school in private educational systems. More broadly, it can refer to any group of colleagues, such as an electoral college, a College of Arms or the College of Cardinals.

The precise usage of the term varies among the English-speaking countries. In the United States and Ireland, for example, the terms "college" and "university" may be regarded as loosely interchangeable, whereas in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries, a "college" is usually an institution between school and university level (although constituent schools within universities are sometimes known as "colleges"). In French, a "collège" refers both to 4 years of middle school and to a general concept of sharing an institution, and in the Commonwealth countries, some older private primary and secondary schools retain this sense of the word (for example, Eton College).

Originally, it meant a group of persons living together, under a common set of rules (con- = "together" + leg- = "law" or lego = "I choose"); indeed, some colleges call their members "fellows".